


saving the world.

by waterpllar



Series: sakura collection (aus and tidbits) [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst, Attempt at Humor, Codependency, Dai-nana-han | Team 7 Dynamics (Naruto), Multi, Slice of Life, Team 7 is overpowered (and depressed), Time Travel, except they kill people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-26 12:20:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30105876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterpllar/pseuds/waterpllar
Summary: She takes a bite of the crisp fruit. “We’ve already destroyed the major threats,” she answers. “No wars, currently. Political corruption is at the minimum in Konoha. I don’t think there’s anything left for us to be taking care, of really.”“Tch. There’s always something to be taken care of,” Sasuke scoffs.“Just the burdens of being time travellers!” says Kakashi cheerfully, nose buried in a book. “You knew what you were getting into.”“I did not,” Sasuke sniffs haughtily, “account for how boring it would be once we saved the world.”Sakura sighs.time travel but a little bit different: what are time travelers supposed to do when they're done saving the universe?
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Hatake Kakashi, Haruno Sakura & Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto, Implied Uzumaki Naruto/Uchiha Sasuke, implied Haruno Sakura/Yamanaka Ino
Series: sakura collection (aus and tidbits) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2221836
Comments: 1
Kudos: 105





	saving the world.

**Author's Note:**

> i have a million 'first chapters' of sakura-centric works so i decided i'll post some that are longer! i don't know if i'll continue but lemme know in the comments if any of u are interested <3

Sakura is the one who grows up. She’s the one who goes into battle and elbows deep in the enemy’s blood. She throws herself into the Will of Fire, into Konoha. 

She walks with Kakashi behind Naruto and Sasuke, and not because she is lacking in talent or power. She stays to watch their backs, because they will never mind their own. 

Sasuke is beautiful and valuable and people will always listen to him, fall at his feet and settle for being in his presence. Naruto shines brighter than the sun, draws people to him with a loud voice and ridiculous beliefs that he never had to discard. 

They burn and freeze anyone who gets too close, and it’s fitting that they only have each other. Sakura only manages to stay from a built up tolerance. Kakashi gets away with having half a bloodline limit that harms more than helps and body that’s been broken and fixed too many times. 

Maybe Sakura falls in the same category, but her healing is too flawless. Any scars she might have had before are gone, replaced by a bleeding wound and then smooth skin. She could probably pose as the civilian girl again, if her features weren’t already so notorious. 

The day Kakashi showed her an updated bingo book from Suna, her name listed beside the bold, _flee on sight_ mark, she’d been so disappointed. 

She doesn’t waste her chakra on maintaining a henge when she’s part of Team Seven, but it’s a necessity when she goes out to villages alone. 

There’s always someone who needs her, and she can’t afford to gain the sort of reputation endless rejection will get her. She just can’t waste any chakra, she wants to explain. Sakura isn’t like Naruto with his endless chakra pool or Sasuke with his Sharingan. 

She and Kakashi are the same in that respect. He makes up for his constantly drained reserves with endless jutsus and techniques, and she has perfect control over everything in her being. How amusing is that: Kakashi’s least favorite student is now his only comrade, the only person who will understand his plight as the former teacher of two supernovas. 

Sakura doesn’t hold it against him. 

How could she, when they are the only four people left in their world?

x

“Ne, Sakura-chan,” Naruto says, passing her an apple. “What do you think we do next? Haven’t we already gotten rid of Kaguya?” 

They always look to her. Naruto is the leader now, but she makes the decisions, because Kakashi no longer talks of anything but meaningless drivel and Sasuke still has not opened his eyes. 

She takes a bite of the crisp fruit. “We’ve already destroyed the major threats,” she answers. “No wars, currently. Political corruption is at the minimum in Konoha. I don’t think there’s anything left for us to be taking care, of really.”

“Tch. There’s always something to be taken care of,” Sasuke scoffs. 

“Just the burdens of being time travellers!” says Kakashi cheerfully, nose buried in a book. “You knew what you were getting into.”

“I did not,” Sasuke sniffs haughtily, “account for how boring it would be once we saved the world.” 

Sakura sighs. 

“We could go back to Konoha. Kakashi, weren’t you the student of the Yondaime?”

“I was,” he confirms. “But the fact that we took Obito from Madara means- means I probably would have sacrificed myself instead of him.” 

“Since you still have Obito’s Sharingan from before, you’ll probably have caused a paradox if it weren’t for . . . convenient accidents,” she grimaces. 

“You’ll still be captured and probably executed for bloodline theft, though,” Sasuke offers. 

“Whatever,” scoffs Naruto. “I’m going back to Konoha at some point. What else are we supposed to do?”

Sakura looks away at that. 

It’s true. She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do. None of them do. When Naruto came back from a month long trip with hidden scrolls and a maddened expression on his face, they hadn’t questioned him. She’d spent days in the tiny room with Sasuke and Kakashi, trying to decipher the seals. 

When they’d finally finished the last page, she’d jumped up and laughed harder than she had in months. Elated with the knowledge that finally, she’d have something to do that weren’t standard missions and healing the sick. 

Team Seven doesn’t do well in peacetime. 

Maybe once upon a time, when they were still fifteen and full of determination, peace would have felt like a dream. Before Naruto lost Jiraiya and Sasuke still didn’t know about Itachi, before Sakura had to pull her own innards back into her stomach and Kakashi found and lost the only friend he ever had. 

They’re too broken and jagged to be anything other than weapons in other people’s hands. Sasuke and Naruto hold their handles, wielding each other with a terrifying capacity. Sakura’s not ashamed to say that she is at her best when she is the poison on somebody else’s blade, though. Kakashi has decades of training under his belt, easily issuing his own orders and decisions, but they both know that he’s never thought of himself as anything other than another sword in the Hokage’s arsenal. 

She guesses that’s what it means to be ANBU. Perhaps she would have made a good fit in there, she muses, taking another bite of her apple. 

“We’re staying together, though,” Sasuke says suddenly. He has that look in his eye that dares anybody to defy him, but nobody does. 

“Why would we split up?” Naruto’s face twists into a confused expression, as if the very notion of not being a team is foreign. 

“We’re not,” Kakashi cuts in, eye curving into his smile. “Still my cute genin, aren’t you? I have to take care of you lot.”

“I’m jounin,” Sakura reminds him, but the words still bring a smile to her face. 

“Semantics,” he shrugs. “We’re technically missing nin.”

Sasuke barks a sharp laugh at that, sending a pointed, if not good-natured look to Naruto. “No longer the golden child of Konoha?” 

Naruto just shoves a bandaged hand in Sasuke’s face, scowling. They dissolve into a brief scrabble over the blanket they have laid over the dusty ground, while Sakura watches. 

Part of her thinks it is a blessing to be here, to have the three most important (alive) people in her life under her watch, but the other half isn’t so certain. When Naruto brought his hands together with the final seal, connected to each of them, she wasn’t expecting much. 

Wasn’t expecting anything at all, really. They could have very well died from the strain, or simply failed a second time against the likes of Madara and Kaguya. 

The reality of their situation now is that the world is perfect and the sun is shining, but there is no purpose for their lives. She’s sure Naruto and Sasuke could find a place somewhere in the world, but without even Konoha there to remind her of her usefulness of staying alive, she’s not sure what she can do. None of them really expected to survive their ordeals, even if they were in the past and much better equipped. 

She can see it in the set of Kakashi’s eyes, the way he can barely make it a full night without shaking awake from a nightmare that he can’t remember. Naruto doesn’t laugh at much anything anymore, only playing up his goofy personality for the occasional smirk from the rest of them. Sakura’s caught Sasuke running the chidori through his arm longer than it should be, skin flaking off from the strain of maintaining it so long. 

She reprimands him, then heals him anyway, because he’s still part of the team. Even after he put a hand through her chest, she still loves him, and he cares for her, somewhat. Sakura will never be Naruto but nobody can be Naruto, so she accepts his awkward attempts at affection and tries to bring back that smile she would always flash him when they were young. 

(She doesn’t think of Ino, of flowers in her hair and pupil-less eyes staring into her own inches away. Doesn’t think of those same eyes wide open and unseeing, dried tears on her cheeks.) 

Sakura looks at Kakashi’s face, one eye covered by his hitai-ate, and envies him, somewhat. Maybe she should have taken a piece of Ino, too, except that kind of would have been stealing. Ino was already dead when they found her. Sakura wishes Ino would have given her an eye, too, to see the future with her. Her eye was fine, but she could have done the transplant flawlessly.

Such a shame that the Yamanaka bloodline limit doesn’t have anything to do with their eyes; the unusual coloring is just an effect of the jutsu written into their genetics. 

Honestly, it’s a miracle that Kakashi’s body didn’t automatically reject the Sharingan all those years ago. Sakura’s heard the story only once, but an emergency eye transplant in a dusty cave under the hands of a thirteen-year-old medic-nin, prodigy or not, is one of the worst conditions to be attempting such a procedure. Not that Sakura couldn’t do it, of course, but she’s the exception. 

She’s offered to remove the Sharingan for Kakashi, too. 

She told him under the burning sun one day in Suna, whispered so that the others wouldn’t hear. The Sharingan was slowly killing him. At the very most, he’d live to be forty-five, from the constant strain on his chakra system and his neurological pathways. 

Kakashi just shook his head with a wry smile under his mask. Sakura didn’t ask, because she didn’t expect to be alive ten years later, anyways. Kakashi is still in his physical prime; she won’t question his decisions until he starts slowing down.

And even if he grows blind in his good eye, unable to continue being a shinobi, Sakura will still stay with him. Kakashi’s worth, despite what he may think, doesn’t lie in his title as the Copy-nin, or the Sharingan, or as a powerful jounin. He’s Team Seven. As the former leader, their sensei who never taught them anything, Sakura thinks he’s more valuable than any other hokage or elite shinobi. 

She tells him as much, but he just sighs and smiles, “I’m already obsolete. No need to worry about your old sensei, Sakura.” 

She doesn’t contradict him for his hypocrisy, because they’re all useless, now. No one needs earth shattering shinobi when there are no wars. No one needs medic-nin who can heal fatal wounds as soon as they form, when there are no weeks-long battles against gods. 

If anyone here still has use, it’s Kakashi, but it’s not Sakura’s job to convince him of that fact. She’s here to make sure her team stays alive. Being mentally healthy has never been a priority, even before Sasuke left. 

Survival is the only thing she requires from Team Seven. The very thought of losing one of them is unbearable.

If Kakashi or Sasuke or Naruto die, then Sakura really has failed her only mission.


End file.
